Now that U46 is live how are we feeling?

Defatank

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

sans-culottes wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

drkfrontiers wrote: »

It might all seem fine now.

But I am pretty sure that in a very short space of time all endgame content with be gated behind a specific meta of subclass.

Don't say it will not happen because that's the state of ESO trials already.

"list achievements! know mechs! No HA build! Only certain sets and abilities allowed rAwRRR"

And I dare say... as a Pver I sincerely pity the PvP folks. How dreadful. And all the incoming nerfs to balance that melting pot of angst is going to affect the base classes the most...

So yah. yay for "build diversity". More homogeneity IMHO

Oh you are absolutely 100% spot on with this comment. There will undoubtedly be new "meta" builds coming out of the wood work. Matter of fact its already happening as we speak. DK / Arc / Warden is a super "powerful" build setup. Seen a couple of things with NB and Sorc for bursty dmg. So yea the "elitist" are doing what they do and its sad. You can thank WoW "World first" groups and damage meters for this. Dont get me wrong damage meters are a great tool to help you understand if the changes youre making are better or worse for what youre trying to accomplish but the 1%er's of the game will take that tool and push it to the very limits to crank out a "meta" and then spin that as this is how EVERYONE should play because nobody can else can get these numbers being displayed on screen or in a metering tool. When in reality there are far plenty enough builds that will do absolutely just fine in any other group and get the content done without having to have all the stress of "beating the content in .05236 sec" faster. and just for the record I use to be in that elitist group of WoW progression raiding and its not fun. Its hella stressful, it feels like a job that I'm not getting paid for and in the end makes for nothing but confrontation in groups because someone is going to get yelled at for a wipe. ESO is much more fun when you just play what feels right to your playstyle and have fun and not worry about the damage your doing and realize monsters are dying, people are staying alive and we're making progress and at the end of the day everyone accomplished the goal. And if someone doesn't know what they're doing on a fight, educate them in a professional manner and help again it ends up being a positive experience for everyone in the end and people again win at the goal trying to be achieved.

PvP is a bit of a different animal though and that does lead into imbalances of combat interaction because now youre injecting the player to player factor where as the monster you just killed really could care less that you hit him for 10k dmg / sec versus 150k dmg / sec. The only thing we can really do in the PvP sense is keep an eye out for combinations that are over performing, make the devs aware of it and let them adjust accordingly. But of course youre going to have groups of people who will put together some exploit of combinations that makes some build beyond stupid powerful and then they will sit on how they done it and not say a word and think they're the Gods of ESO because they can obliterate anyone they come into contact with when in reality they have to have some unfair advantage in combat in order to compete because real combat where exploits are not being used is just way to difficult for them to deal with?

TL;DR: Play the game with what feels fun to you and chances are its more than enough to do most any content you want to do and have fun with. If you find something broken tell the dev team and how you found it so it can be fixed.

Min-maxing didn’t originate with WoW. It’s existed for as long as players have been given stats to optimize, whether in tabletop games, MUDs, or early MMOs like EverQuest. WoW may have popularized certain cultural forms of raid parsing and “world first” races, but the instinct to optimize builds and seek efficiency is older than Blizzard’s entire catalog.

Reducing this behavior to some WoW-borne contagion ignores decades of player-driven theorycrafting across genres and platforms. It also sidesteps the more pressing issue: ZOS’s own system design now requires players to make subclass choices, while simultaneously offering no meaningful way to test or iterate those choices without gold fees, paid armory slots, or significant time investment.

In other words, the structure itself encourages optimization. It then punishes you for attempting it.

You're definitely not wrong there with what you said about prior games having people min/maxing, I believe we can both agree that WoW mainstreamed it as you said bringing it into a more social media space / clout chase of who is the "best" for whatever that is worth. Me personally as I stated before, been there done that with the "progression raiding" and its not fun and I'm here to have fun playing the game. If that means I'm "casual" then so be it, I'll be the most casual laid back gamer ever and be excited to logon and play more again the next day

In regards to being punished and being held behind paygates of gold, etc. I think this kind of gets into another discussion I seen yesterday about why limit players with limited loadout slots etc. Short answer to that is its a technical hurdle of database design, when you have hundreds of thousands / millions of players saving multiple builds to a database and it gets called on to swap from build 1 to build 3, etc etc, those databases do have limits. And I'm not sure how you would go about just removing that altogether and being able to swap between builds either? I mean addons stored locally on your machine can do it (alpha gear done it before the in game loadout manager was applied). And ZOS will absolutely get their cut of the pie for developing any system they put in the game one way or another. Does that mean how its paid for is right? That is entirely debatable / opinion of the players. Me personally I think the loadout slots as they currently sit only applying to 1 character for 1 slot each at 1500 crowns is a bit pricey. If it were 1500 crowns for the account as a whole? That might be a bit under priced honestly but I think would be more well received by players if it was account wide OR lower it from 1500 down to say 500 per slot per character.

Arthtur

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

The only thing i hate is how ZOS balances this game.
The rest? Im mostly just disappointed.
If there were some new skill lines it would be a lot better. But there is nothing new. Still the same hundreds of useless sets. Outdated skills and passives after years of changes. It just that Subclassing hides the problems because players can choose skill lines that have good skills and passives.
And what i have to do? I have to make new build on my DKs. Not because there are new cool ways to build them but to make them actually playable after the nerfs. Amazing.
And if we think about all the previous systems like IA, Scribing... there is nothing new either.
Just pure disappointment.

fizzylu

Changed my mind from postive to negative about U46 (thought it was going to be amazing, but its a mess)

The new UI is really bringing down my experience with it all, but I'm also not extremely feeling subclassing like I hoped I would and am considering just staying as a pure class build making the feature pointless to me.
I also find it concerning that Zenimax even let the issue with the necromancer summons go live and that they ever thought that was an okay idea, overlooking the fact that it creates situations where necromancers may not be able to use their damage ability.

So to summarize what the update has brought to the game from my viewpoint:

• Another change no one asked for
• Another feature I'll barely engage with and that might even negatively impact character building going forward
• Another reason(s) to question Zenimax and not feel comfortable giving them my money

fufu_from_ps4

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

Defatank wrote: »

Now that we've had U46 for a couple of days on the live servers and the rollout seem to be pretty smooth (well done ZOS). I think now is a great time to repoll some of the preliminary things we've all seen floating around the forums So now that U46 is live how are you feeling about the state of ESO? And please feel free to expand on your thoughts and lets keep it professional in here

non pet magsorc is effectively dead. the heal from the ward needed a nerf, the nerf to max mag passives lost me 4.5k mag tho, killing my damage and shield. can no longer be effective 1v1 vs a good player. in fact, even vs people i used to easily beat the class struggles now. 1vx you might as well not even try.

furthermore, pvp is now nb gankers with overload, dks spamming beam, and everyone has wardens beetles. it makes it impossible to set a kill priority (like, decide which players you will kill in which order. you must either decide this, or aoe everything down. sorcs dont aoe anything down ) . identifieing rotations is no longer fun (oh which class is this? no idea. which skill lines, what spammable, what spec blah blah blah. theres just too much to narrow down and you might as well just choose based on hp at this point, ignore everything else ). the great players are now unkillable with huge aoe burst and the poor noobs are worse off than ever.

class identity is dead. flavor is gone.

worse of all i dont see this as fixable. they will release vengence but no one will go there. i suspect by time its out no one will even be in gray host. you'd have to roll back the patch, at which point the casuals will revolt and then you will have alienated 100% of the player pop. we stepped on a mine in the desert. if you step off, we explode. if you dont move we starve. quite the canundrum.

and people will argue.... just subclass ! why? i like to be a wizard. a sorc. ive been forced to play thru proc metas, forced to watch as the mag stam split was removed. now this? no one is unique? nothing is sacred? no one is special? a big blend of nothingness. big oof.

i miss wroebel. his vision was pristine. this is an abomination of a masterpiece.

Defatank

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

Pevey wrote: »

Looking at the guild roster of my most active guild, exactly one person is in the Solstice zone right now.

Only ZOS has the actual data, but from what I can see, the content pass is a flop.

As for subclassing... I just wish they would not have done it. I had tons of master writs saved up, so I used Monday to just power level all lines. So it's done, and now I can use those lines in buildd whenever I want to. But I find I have no desire to, and it's killing my general interest in doing the sort of content I would usually do. You are now underpowered compared to your group if you don't subclass, so it kind of kills all my interest in playing.

Go to Craglorn, Spellscar wayshrine over to the zombies / Skyreach Catacombs / BRP, you'll see where all the players are right now. Vast majority of people are grinding skill levels out to max before digging into the new zone.

In reference to the comment about being underpowered for not using subclassing, I think this is likely going to prove 100% accurate which honestly is an issue. While we are forced to trade off other skill lines / passives and it does hurt losing some of those especially depending on the class you are, I dont know long term if that is going to be enough to keep "Pure classes" on a level playing field with Hybrid classes. I've definitely seen some pretty nasty combinations of skills just leveling up skill lines that its like woah... thats alot of damage. or seeing somethings with my tank builds that its like wow now that is REALLY nice to have access to. So yea you do have a valid concern here with it being "fair" to the pure builds versus hybrid builds, but we just have to see what the community comes up with and if something is clearly OP it'll have to be adjusted.

LannStone

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Just been doing the new zone story with an established character so far, so that's all I can comment on now
1. First impression was the landscape seems pretty empty, not leaving me with that appreciation for the art that I usually get from a new zone
2. Second impression is that the main city seems unnecessarily convoluted and mazelike
3. Third impression is that the story is not emotionally engaging me, more like click here, go there

Elvenheart

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

Pevey wrote: »

You are now underpowered compared to your group if you don't subclass, so it kind of kills all my interest in playing.

For me, so far my Subclassed build has been fun but no more powerful than my non-Subclassed sorcerers, and actually less powerful than any of my Oakensoul characters, but I’m only in the high 40s of leveling the Subclassed skills yet. So isn’t it more like we are underpowered compared to a very specific small amount of meta Subclassed builds, like we’ve always been underpowered in groups when other players in that group have maximized their build/are running the meta?

Defatank

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

fufu_from_ps4 wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

Now that we've had U46 for a couple of days on the live servers and the rollout seem to be pretty smooth (well done ZOS). I think now is a great time to repoll some of the preliminary things we've all seen floating around the forums So now that U46 is live how are you feeling about the state of ESO? And please feel free to expand on your thoughts and lets keep it professional in here

in fact, even vs people i used to easily beat the class struggles now. 1vx you might as well not even try.

it makes it impossible to set a kill priority (like, decide which players you will kill in which order. you must either decide this, or aoe everything down. sorcs dont aoe anything down ) . identifieing rotations is no longer fun (oh which class is this? no idea. which skill lines, what spammable, what spec blah blah blah. theres just too much to narrow down and you might as well just choose based on hp at this point, ignore everything else ). the great players are now unkillable with huge aoe burst and the poor noobs are worse off than ever.

class identity is dead. flavor is gone.

worse of all i dont see this as fixable. they will release vengence but no one will go there. i suspect by time its out no one will even be in gray host. you'd have to roll back the patch, at which point the casuals will revolt and then you will have alienated 100% of the player pop. we stepped on a mine in the desert. if you step off, we explode. if you dont move we starve. quite the canundrum.

and people will argue.... just subclass ! why? i like to be a wizard. a sorc. ive been forced to play thru proc metas, forced to watch as the mag stam split was removed. now this? no one is unique? nothing is sacred? no one is special? a big blend of nothingness. big oof.

I cleaned up some of your quote to kind of hit some of the bullet points.

1. Pretty sure the community has complained about 1vx's since the dawn of the game. Nobody wants to be stuck trying to kill 1 player with 32 other people smacking on him for 5 min. Its a cute build bud but your faction has already left you to die and you wont... Those types of builds do have a purpose its when youre on the front line being healed by your faction and trying to hold the line, but youre not suppose to be invincible by yourself and that leads into ball groups which is basically just 1vx's except its a ball versus a huge zerg and they run around the keep for 20 min wasting everyones time not capping anything and just farming kills for their youtube channel as "content" laughing the whole time. Bottom line of this is there needs to be some element of surprise that the 1vx's / ball groups didn't see coming that ends combat and decides a victor and move the battle along. Its fine to have long drawn out battles when the entire faction is there fighting for control. But having a very small amount of players being able to hold up a very large amount of players is a problem.

2. ESO's combat design from the get go was very reactional and not proactional. Meaning you pay attention to what is being done in combat and you use what you have at your disposal to deal with what is happening in real time. It makes combat more exciting and you dont know what youre going to come up against. You just know you've selected 12 abilities for how youre going to try and fight and if you've got the ones that gets you the upper hand you'll make quick work of someone, if not you'll get folded up like a lawn chair and wait for your res / respawn. IMO having veteran players just instinctively know what a DK is going to do simply because he is a DK is a bad thing it leverages veterans to constantly keep control of the game stepping on new players to where they cant have a good time. But having that element of surprise can 100% swing the battle in a new players way versus a vet because that new player was like hey this should work well and the vet didn't see it coming. It doesn't make the vet a bad player and it doesn't make the new player a God, it keeps combat different because you literally could have almost anything thrown at you. So now players shouldn't be able to just willy nilly run into combat like Leeroy Jenkins laughing the whole time like they're the best thing since sliced bread.

3. "Class identity" I have seen this so much in the past few weeks. As an example, yea WoW was fun when we knew Warriors wore heavy armor, dual wield or S&B thats what they done b/c that was their identity blah blah blah. WoW is 20 years old too. Again ESO came into this MMO space with the expectation of an Elder Scrolls game allowing a player to pick up whatever armor they found, weapon etc and equip it right then and use it. Your "class identity" starts with what youre choosing to wear, what weapons youre choosing to use and what types of skills youre choosing to throw out. I think people want to tie static assignments of "Warrior", "Rogue", "Mage" to "Dragonknight", "Nightblade", "Sorc / Arc" and they honestly never have been not since day 1 of the game. They have bits and pieces that are similar to it, but all in all players who come from other MMO games really need to allow themselves to be a noob again and learn how ESO is designed from the ground up and until they do players will ALWAYS complain about how ESO is designed because it is truly different in that regard in its framework.

4. Vengence. As I have said before in my reply to Wheels looking for feedback on vengence. It was a test campaign, it should have only been used in such a manner and to even begin thinking putting vengence in as a permanent campaign is a huge mistake, it had its purpose it served its purpose and proved just what the game is capable of in a controlled environment and furthermore proved we have a skill / set issue on our hands causing the performance issues. Period. The devs need to focus on what abilities with set combinations or whatever the mix / lack there of is that is causing the performance problems, fix that and then move forward with making Cyrodiil better in the long run.

5. Not really sure about the "nothing special" part. I am honestly really excited about all the different combinations of abilities I can come up with now on my main as well as subclassing promoting playing alts too that I really never had the desire to play. I mean I have over 10k hours on my DK versus like MAYBE 20 days total across 6 other classes?

Sorry for such a long response

KalevaLaine

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

Really bad update, especially UI and subclassing.

After 5 Years on PS and 5 on PC with 3600 CP I think about quitting.

GloatingSwine

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Still wondering who a Dragonknight hurt so badly that they're not allowed to have sustain any more.

Sluggy

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Defatank wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

One of my raid group disbanded, as some players quit the game.

As my gf saw, that she have to level all classes again, eventho she had all classes fully levelled over the past years, she immediately logged out and is totally unmotivated for the game now.

Was expected.

I can see the blow of putting in the effort of leveling alts and skills having all that to 50 only to be hit with sorry level them again. I believe ZOS took this somewhat into mind though because they obviously didn't want everyone to just day 1 come in and bam everything instantly max level versus those who are still progressing things (newer players etc) and having to deal with them having immediate access to max everything. So I kind of get why ZOS took the approach they did. I myself have all 7 classes made with the majority of them having max skill lines from power leveling them. I think I had 3 or 4 skill lines that I had to "subclass" because they wasn't maxed yet. The others were just equippable immediately which was nice but yea still had to be leveled. So far 2 days in I have managed to max out 10 / 21 skill lines. So its not a horrible grind especially if you pop a grand exp scroll and throw on 2 skills from each new skill line. The great thing is ZOS is only making everyone level them up 1x. Which again I think goes back to keeping things on a "level playing field" for everyone if that makes sense? But you definitely have a point

the fundamental problem with this is that leveling and progress in this game simply isn't fun. I mean, I guess it *might* be fun the first time or so. But honestly, once you get to a certain point it's just a rote exercise for no reason other than 'well that's what you are supposed to do!'. Compare that to a game like diablo where character progress is literally the entire point of the game and once you've reached a comfortable max it is time to start over with a new challenge (works especially well for hardcore). This game (and to be fair many many many rpgs like it, including the newest diablo) don't have such gameplay built into their leveling. It literally is just a thing you have to do before you can actually start playing the fun [snip] part of the game with that character.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Defatank

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

Sluggy wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

One of my raid group disbanded, as some players quit the game.

As my gf saw, that she have to level all classes again, eventho she had all classes fully levelled over the past years, she immediately logged out and is totally unmotivated for the game now.

Was expected.

I can see the blow of putting in the effort of leveling alts and skills having all that to 50 only to be hit with sorry level them again. I believe ZOS took this somewhat into mind though because they obviously didn't want everyone to just day 1 come in and bam everything instantly max level versus those who are still progressing things (newer players etc) and having to deal with them having immediate access to max everything. So I kind of get why ZOS took the approach they did. I myself have all 7 classes made with the majority of them having max skill lines from power leveling them. I think I had 3 or 4 skill lines that I had to "subclass" because they wasn't maxed yet. The others were just equippable immediately which was nice but yea still had to be leveled. So far 2 days in I have managed to max out 10 / 21 skill lines. So its not a horrible grind especially if you pop a grand exp scroll and throw on 2 skills from each new skill line. The great thing is ZOS is only making everyone level them up 1x. Which again I think goes back to keeping things on a "level playing field" for everyone if that makes sense? But you definitely have a point

the fundamental problem with this is that leveling and progress in this game simply isn't fun. I mean, I guess it *might* be fun the first time or so. But honestly, once you get to a certain point it's just a rote exercise for no reason other than 'well that's what you are supposed to do!'. Compare that to a game like diablo where character progress is literally the entire point of the game and once you've reached a comfortable max it is time to start over with a new challenge (works especially well for hardcore). This game (and to be fair many many many rpgs like it, including the newest diablo) don't have such gameplay built into their leveling. It literally is just a thing you have to do before you can actually start playing the fun [snip] part of the game with that character.

In all seriousness this is a great comment and there is a LOT of valuable info we can take away from the comment and what I am about to say because I to have played my fair share of diablo and I know precisely what youre referring to and I honestly have what I feel like is the reason why things are like they are in ESO for your perception.

In Diablo once you get your character rolling and honestly even from the start the threat of dying is kind of right in your face and you dont really want to die. As things start ramping up and combat becomes more actional your focus dials in and all those combos, numbers things dying arms flying, health poppin up and down and youre like WHOOOO!!!! Its fun aint it? Where is that type of threat in ESO? Especially in PvE more specifically just randomly running around the map. You see a troll right? Maybe the first couple of encounters that troll scared the crap out of you because *skyrim flashback* *shutters* ok now that we're past that.... You kind of see where I am going with this right? When you come across MOST enemies in ESO you already know what the result is going to be ESPECIALLY if youre a seasoned player, that monster is as good as dead and if you choose to ignore it then that monster just had a lucky day right?

IMO Tamriel needs to be more threatening to players, make them actually play the game and not just click a couple buttons and hey I win! While that is fun initially over time and especially getting into grinding it becomes monotonous because all youre doing is running in circles repeating the same button clicks with no real change or threat of anything. Its simply just having to commit the time to do it and that means your time spent in the end doesn't feel "worth it" because you didn't really work for anything you just screen timed the game to achieve it.

Now I do say all this with a bit of hesitance to it, the game doesn't need to be so overly complex / complicated that the casual players who they really just want to login and run around enjoying the scenery, do fishing, housing, play ToT (basically doing things in the game that quite literally has NOTHING to do with combat is my point) can still login and play. I'm not entirely sure how we thread that needle though. I've seen some options of having a toggleable mode for the game being more challenging or not and maybe yielding better rewards? but by all means chime in with additional thoughts

[edited to remove quote]

fufu_from_ps4

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

[/quote]

I cleaned up some of your quote to kind of hit some of the bullet points.


3. "Class identity" I have seen this so much in the past few weeks. As an example, yea WoW was fun when we knew Warriors wore heavy armor, dual wield or S&B thats what they done b/c that was their identity blah blah blah. WoW is 20 years old too. Again ESO came into this MMO space with the expectation of an Elder Scrolls game allowing a player to pick up whatever armor they found, weapon etc and equip it right then and use it. Your "class identity" starts with what youre choosing to wear, what weapons youre choosing to use and what types of skills youre choosing to throw out. I think people want to tie static assignments of "Warrior", "Rogue", "Mage" to "Dragonknight", "Nightblade", "Sorc / Arc" and they honestly never have been not since day 1 of the game. They have bits and pieces that are similar to it, but all in all players who come from other MMO games really need to allow themselves to be a noob again and learn how ESO is designed from the ground up and until they do players will ALWAYS complain about how ESO is designed because it is truly different in that regard in its framework.


Sorry for such a long response [/quote]

3. eso isnt wow. how can you have class identity when everything has everything? its a ludacris suggestion. sorc has streak. nb has cloak. plar has beam. no longer will that be the case. wardens are streaking, sorcs are cloaking, and dks are beaming. i feel like you're trying to argue because you think subclassing is a good idea, which is fine. but i feel like the arguements you're posting arent honest in nature. classes had defined identities and now they are gone. its rather obvious.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

fufu_from_ps4 wrote: »

classes had defined identities and now they are gone.

And thank Namira for that, since TES isn't Warcraft and classes have never had defined identities.

ArchMikem

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Hi, Console pleb here.

Still waiting, but I've looked at PTS discussions and just watched the trailer. The fact they changed the content scheme from Chapters to "Seasons" (which to me just SCREAMS Season Pass band wagon other companies do), and the story for Solstice is just...I'm barely interested.

Gone are the days of Wrothgar, Summerset, and Elsweyr.

Defatank

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

fufu_from_ps4 wrote: »

I cleaned up some of your quote to kind of hit some of the bullet points.


3. "Class identity" I have seen this so much in the past few weeks. As an example, yea WoW was fun when we knew Warriors wore heavy armor, dual wield or S&B thats what they done b/c that was their identity blah blah blah. WoW is 20 years old too. Again ESO came into this MMO space with the expectation of an Elder Scrolls game allowing a player to pick up whatever armor they found, weapon etc and equip it right then and use it. Your "class identity" starts with what youre choosing to wear, what weapons youre choosing to use and what types of skills youre choosing to throw out. I think people want to tie static assignments of "Warrior", "Rogue", "Mage" to "Dragonknight", "Nightblade", "Sorc / Arc" and they honestly never have been not since day 1 of the game. They have bits and pieces that are similar to it, but all in all players who come from other MMO games really need to allow themselves to be a noob again and learn how ESO is designed from the ground up and until they do players will ALWAYS complain about how ESO is designed because it is truly different in that regard in its framework.


Sorry for such a long response

3. eso isnt wow. how can you have class identity when everything has everything? its a ludacris suggestion. sorc has streak. nb has cloak. plar has beam. no longer will that be the case. wardens are streaking, sorcs are cloaking, and dks are beaming. i feel like you're trying to argue because you think subclassing is a good idea, which is fine. but i feel like the arguements you're posting arent honest in nature. classes had defined identities and now they are gone. its rather obvious.

[/quote]

100% ESO isn't WoW thank God lol which I enjoyed my years in WoW but I also complained about the fundamental framework of the game from right out the gate. ESO absolutely is leaps and bounds ahead of WoW in that respect.

I think our perception of how we are seeing the discussion is moreso the rub here. You line out that "NB has cloak" which you associate that to that is an ability that only Nightblade can access (or has been able to). What has been stopping my DK from picking up medium armor, with a bow, daggers, and running around in stealth right up behind someone and then assassinate them with a heavy hit? Nothing, and had I not included "stopping my DK" and just simply said I play a character that wears medium armor, uses a bow and daggers and is very stealthy like an assassin you'd automatically say oh you play a night blade dont you? Which again would be incorrect because since day 1 you've been able to play that way with any character. So to think that abilities must be assigned to a specific class name isn't correct. Your Class Identity as I stated begins with how youre choosing to play the game which has again since day 1 been at the heart of the games design right out the gate that is a fact. Devs have simply found a way to create a system (subclassing) that allows you to get access to abilities that play right into how youre wanting to play while preserving your original choice of "class" to begin with.

And also just respectfully replying to the comments here not trying to argue what so ever. As you said it is fine that I think subclassing is a good idea and it is fine that you think subclassing is a bad idea. We are both correct in our viewpoints and its healthy that we get our ideas out on the table for everyone to review that is part of change

Sluggy

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Defatank wrote: »

...snipped for bevity...

Yeah, I think difficulty is a huge part of it. There's no sense of being afraid, growing stronger and then old challenges are now trivial yet new ones that were scary or impossible before are now manageable.

I also thing itemization is part of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually quite fond of the horizontal progression for items. It makes endgame and PvP much more enjoyable for me. But it also means that I don't bother to look at a single item that drops from level 1 to Cp160, except maybe to bind it if it isn't already. I can get away with crafting a trainer set and wearing that from level 16 until I'm at max gear level and then stash it away for the next time.

But that's kind of my problem. Next time. It feels exactly the same. It isn't challenging or exciting. The same gear with the same bonuses because there is only one bonus that matters... Xp increase. And why is that? Because we want to get it over as soon as possible. And when that is the core of your gameplay during leveling... to skip it. To NOT play it as much as possible, then it is a flawed design from the start. Either do away with it or rebuild it into something that actually is worth it in it's own right and not just a stepping stone to actually gate the real meat of the game. Or I guess... you know... sell something that lets you skip it. Great, now people are spending actual real money to not play a portion of your game. That's absolutely the most obvious sign that you've designed something badly.

As for the folks that just want to play for the story or just want to hang out and fish or explore around... that's great!. What does leveling even help with that? If anything it's just a hindrance to them as well. There's still no value or difference when they are level 16 vs level 30 when doing a story quest.

SeaGtGruff

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

As far as the new zone, I've only been to the main city very briefly on one character, so I haven't done any exploring yet and can't comment about the zone or storyline.

And as far as subclassing, I haven't tried it out yet, although I'm looking forward to experimenting with it a bit.

But I'm absolutely loving the furnishings vault and all of the space I've freed up in my characters' inventories, bank account, and storage containers. The process of reorganizing everything the way I want it is going slowly, but I'm going to be able to do daily crafting writs on all of my alts again, not to mention taking them back out into the world for questing and leveling up their skills. So far I've only done that on one of my alts, but I'm thinking of going through a rotation of alts from day to day so everyone has a chance to get out and about.

So basically, U46 is giving me a sort of new lease on playing the game, at least as far as playing on my alts and not just using them as glorified "inventory pets." I loved resuming my playthrough of Eastmarch today on one of my alts, and look forward to resuming my playthrough of other zones on my other alts.

Soarora

Neutral. Am I excited for the new zone? No. How do I feel about subclassing? I’m checked out. The combat changes? Haven’t really tested, only care about plar beam changes (good for me I think).

licenturion

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

I like the new update (esp subclassing to try out other stuff without making alts).

Only think I don't like is that that first part of the new zone feels like 90 percent of recycled assets and feels lazy. I hope the second part is more diverse, but I fear this is just going to be Coldharbour asset reuse.

Compared to High Isle, Apocrypha, Deadlands, Gold Road etc the art department really dropped the ball here and it feels cheap.

Apart from that, I am good.

MasterSpatula

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Drinks_from_Ponds wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

One of my raid group disbanded, as some players quit the game.

As my gf saw, that she have to level all classes again, eventho she had all classes fully levelled over the past years, she immediately logged out and is totally unmotivated for the game now.

Was expected.

You can do normal and vet trials in the group finder

This comment is like telling someone about Tinder at their spouse's funeral.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Loving U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be amazing and its a home run from ZOS)

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Drinks_from_Ponds wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

One of my raid group disbanded, as some players quit the game.

As my gf saw, that she have to level all classes again, eventho she had all classes fully levelled over the past years, she immediately logged out and is totally unmotivated for the game now.

Was expected.

You can do normal and vet trials in the group finder

This comment is like telling someone about Tinder at their spouse's funeral.

Better than telling them at their wedding!

NoSoup

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

SpiritKitten wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

One of my raid group disbanded, as some players quit the game.

As my gf saw, that she have to level all classes again, eventho she had all classes fully levelled over the past years, she immediately logged out and is totally unmotivated for the game now.

Was expected.

If you use the new Green champion star that lets you level up skill lines faster and use an experience scroll then it's not a big deal. I leveled two skill lines in just a couple of hours in spellscar, because also if you have the skill lines maxed out on a bass class which you said she has, you start at level nine already on subclassing.

This is exactly my thoughts. The levelling isn't bad at all. Put on full training gear and went into skyreach catacombs and was able to level 6 trees in 3 hours.

Jaimeh

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

I haven't played around with subclassing a lot yet, I've only tried out a handful of combos. What I'm seeing from the dps pve side of things, is that if you're not using 'herald of the tome' in your combo, it's harder, rotation-wise, to push out competitive numbers. I tried some nb/cro/plar set-ups and they were decent but they didn't feel great to play, imo. I like using active NB skills but in this patch NB skills do better used as passive buffs, which sucks a bit for my NB DDs. Other than than, I tried some fun builds for IA: an 'all the pets' sorc/warden/necro build and a tankier necro/warden/arcanist build and they seemed fun, but I need more time with them. Though I did find myself missing some of the skills from the lines I swapped out, and I think that swapping to lines that all have the same functionality (like for eg., 3 DD lines) comes with its own set of issues, and for solo play I'd probably want a more balanced approach. I haven't gone near PvP yet, I've heard BGs are crazy right now, but eventually I'll get around to updating my builds for there as well. Levelling all the lines took quite a bit of time, so now that I'm done I'm looking forward to trying out more things. However, my inkling is that the meta will have small variations, like always, so it kinda deflates the vision of having all sorts of different dps specs in a group comp... For solo and pvp playing though the system will definitely be a lot more creative.

liliub17_ESO

Not buying a "season pass" on top of ESO plus, so I'm gated out of the new content and goodies.

Sincerely dislike the UI changes. They look extremely simplistic and crude.

Skills changes, am unsure about, have decided to play my younger characters so I likely won't notice a huge change immediately.

Still unsure about sub-classing. Class mechanics had already devolved into mush and while I'm intrigued by finally being able to make an "arcane archer" - sorc with a few warden skills - I'm not altogether sure I really want to do so until ZOS figures out how to balance things. So, based on the dev history of the game, probably not happening.

icapital

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

so the majority of the playerbase if results are extrapolated out are either in severe uncertainty about the game since the update or just flat out HATE the update and what its done.

ESO is in a terrible state now.

bmnoble

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Got mixed feelings about the UI changes, comes across as a placeholder rather than a finished set up.

The stack able master writs, kind of defeat the point if you then have to open and sort them when it comes time to use them, would have been better if we could stack opened writs of the same type/quest conditions IMO.

When I say it defeats the point is the whole reason I hoard them at times is because those master writs are ones I intend to do, any I don't want or can't complete get sold.

New zone feels very small/empty/lot of asset reuse, I understand it is only part of the zone, feel like they are relying too heavily on everyone going and levelling up their sub classes, while having little to do in the new content itself, might not be as big an issue this year but next year they are not going to have that levelling distraction to use.

ArchMikem

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Hey btw, could I get one of you that has a Khajiit with the Shadow Striping body marking collected check if ZOS fixed it and it's appearing on the head again?

valenwood_vegan

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

So I popped on to check subclassing out; I can't quite say that I hate it, but imo it's boring. Same old skills. Grindy to re-level the skill lines up initially. Not much new stuff to actually *do* with them. New zone seems small and not worth the price, so skipping the content pass for now. Balance seems like a mess and I don't even want to touch pvp in this state. Also worried about the next balance patch and mass nerfs. Tbh, I leveled up a couple subclassing skill lines, enjoyed my crazy dps in a dungeon for a minute, and stood around for a while not really knowing what else to do. I have a trial on Friday but until then it's just the same old stuff with the same old skills thrown into a bag and jumbled around. Meh. Will probably check back in 3-6 months and see what's new then.

NeuroticPixels

Changed my mind from postive to negative about U46 (thought it was going to be amazing, but its a mess)

Don’t care for the update. I finished all the zone quests in record time, even while listening to every word and not rushing. Feels empty. Nothing to do except maybe a couple dailies if I feel like it and then there’s no reason to stay in Solstice.

The subclassing did nothing for my magicka dps templar (my main). I’ve tried so many different combinations and nothing feels as good as my old, pure setup. And I don’t really play alts so the system is a letdown for me. I’m still giving it a shot, but I have a feeling I’ll just revert back to a pure class.

No ToT additions. Disappointing.
No new companions. Disappointing.

The new UI doesn’t bother me much because I use several addons that end up masking the new styles.

Furnishing vault is cool, but we didn’t need a new season for them to release that.